On 2012-09-15 10:47, Stephen John Smoogen wrote:
I am seeing a LOT of confusion about what Alpha, Beta and Release
levels. Several people saw the world GOLD and thought that it meant
this was the final release.. other people saw Alpha Release Candidate
and got the same impression. Some of this may be user education and
some of this is our naming conventions. I don't know how to deal with
the naming conventions so leave that bikeshed for someone else to
paint.
I agree the current conventions could be improved. We really should get
around to this between 18 and 19. We have various proposals lying around
in the list archives for changing the naming of RCs and TCs, and we also
have proposals for changing the blocker bug aliases (kinda related). I
also agree we should stop using the word 'gold' for Alphas and Betas
(for the record, QA does not do so, it comes in with the release
announcements, which are FPL/program manager stuff.)
Here is my view of what the release levels mean to me. It probably
doesn't follow the official guideline but it helps me figure out
where
and what to do with it.
What we have that's 'official' are the objectives listed on the
criteria pages. I'll paste these under your descriptions, for
comparison.
Alpha -- Is not a reliable OS for production or for long term
development purposes. In the old parlance, will eat kittens and laugh
when told not to. It is meant for testing only in order to get people
to find the obvious bugs and such. Use on spare hardware or hardware
that you have made a complete backup before and then can reinstall
afterwords. Upgrades from Alpha to any other release may work or they
may choke and die.
The objectives of the Alpha release are to:
Publicly release installable media versions of a feature complete
test release
Test accepted features of Fedora 18
Identify as many F18Beta blocker bugs as possible
Identify as many F18Blocker blocker bugs as possible
Beta -- is not a reliable OS for production but more reliable than
Alpha. In the old parlance, it may eat a kitten and then look
remorseful afterwords. It is meant for testing but should be able to
be used for day to day usage til the release candidate comes out.
Upgrades from Beta to Release may work or they may choke and die.
Upgrades from an old release to Beta should work.
The objectives of the Beta release are to:
Publicly release installable media versions of a code complete test
release: Beta is the last widely co-ordinated test release point in any
given release cycle
Finish testing Fedora 18 Features
Identify as many F18Blocker bugs as possible
Release (or Gamma in my head) -- a reliable OS for production usage
but may cough up a furball or two. It can be used for day to day
usage
and should be good til the next Release or 2 if you want to take a
break from testing. Upgrades from Release to Release should work.
The objective of the Final release is to:
Provide a polished final release suitable for meeting the needs of
our Target Audience
Stephen J Smoogen.
"Years ago my mother used to say to me,... Elwood, you must be oh
so smart or oh so pleasant. Well, for years I was smart. I
recommend pleasant. You may quote me." —James Stewart as Elwood P.
Dowd
I love that quotation, BTW :)
--
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | identi.ca: adamwfedora
http://www.happyassassin.net
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